Let your career magic emerge on the page, every morning.

I’d be lying if I said this part was easy, if you don’t already feel a fairly strong pull toward something. (But if you do feel a strong pull: Just go do it! You’re right!)

There are 3 tools I find useful for most people in this process.

Tool #1: Figure Out Your Defaults

One way to narrow things down is to use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and see what your general processing, experiencing, and problem-solving inclinations are. That info should at least keep you away from wildly unsuitable work. (I talk about that here, with links to the series.) And the suggestions for what people with your type generally like can be useful too, for generating ideas to explore.

Otherwise, I have to tell you that there is no magic bullet here. It’s a process, not a find-the-right-elevator-button endeavor. Some desires and talents are buried really deeply, for a host of reasons that you probably can guess: parents, family, schools, society/culture—the usual suspects. If you are a pleaser type of person, your real desires and longings will need some nurturing before they start to germinate and blossom.

Certainly it’s been a process for me. When I was initially working through what I wanted to do (aside from never, ever practice law again), I kept having this thought that I wanted to do something visual. Yeah, me with the complete absence of art training. I didn’t even take art in high school, for crying out loud. I took one art class in college because I had to. I could not articulate or see at all what this desire was about.

Once I stumbled into a magazine job—through following one of my loves, writing—I figured out that I adored working with words and images together. And that I have this mad obsession for fonts. Go figure.

No wonder one of the few legal projects I liked and felt really competent at were briefs in a design patent case. I directed the photo shoot of the products involved, and drafted the first round, including picture choice and placement, of what became winning briefs. Ah, my one moment in the legal sunshine!

Tool #2: Self-dates

How do you start the process of uncovering your real interests? Well, you know I’m going to suggest self-dates, aka Artist Dates, because I do that all the time (like here, here and here). The executive summary: go do something weekly, by yourself, that is a fun, festive exploration. Aim for an hour, but a half hour is way better than nothing.

I suggest them because they work, whether or not you think you’re artistic. Creativity goes way beyond art, and experiencing diverse things is the fuel of creativity. Plus, making that space for yourself to get out and play, regularly, lets your deeply buried desires know it’s safe to peek out.

Tool #3: Morning Pages

I’m also an avid fan of Julia Cameron’s other creativity recovery tool, Morning Pages (MPs). I’m a fan because they work, whether for creativity or other discoveries you want or need to make. Here’s how you do them:

• Set aside a half hour or so, first thing in the morning, and do stream of consciousness brain dump.
• Your goal is 3 pages.
• Your goal is absolutely NOT high art or even coherence. Half sentences are A-OK. Rambling is excellent.
• Write your pages by hand—that’s important, because the slowness of writing with your hand allows your thoughts to come out slowly enough so that you can hear them.
• You can visit the loo and get coffee before you do Morning Pages, but that’s about it. No walking the dogs, no conversations with children, spouse, or significant other. I suppose you can talk to the goldfish, unless it starts talking back.

The magic of this time is that your inner censor isn’t quite up and going full-bore yet, and so your more genuine self can speak up and say really interesting things.

Mind you, most of the time Morning Pages are whiny, boring and seriously petty. “I need to get some rice noodles before Friday so I can make that pad thai I promised Gil I would.” “I need to go by the cleaners. God, I hate going by the cleaners.” “If my kid mentions Star Wars/Justin Bieber/video games one more time, I’m gonna take a hostage! Will this phase ever end?”

If you find that you freeze when confronted with the page, just write something like “I hate doing these,” repeatedly. Eventually another, different sentence will surface. Promise!

And then, in the midst of the stupid, magic happens. A sentence will pop out that you didn’t even know you were thinking about. A sentence that can change your life. I figured out I wanted to do coaching in my morning pages. I’ve gotten story ideas. I’ve gotten tired of my own whining about the same thing for months on end, and then finally did something about it.

Morning Pages are a way to connect with your own magic. You may well like them at first and then suddenly start hating them. I’ll just warn you that this is a sign you’re about to tell yourself something big, so grit your teeth and keep going. It will be worth it.

Next time, I’ll talk about low-risk ways to try out some of the ideas you get from the MBTI, Morning Pages and Artist Dates.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who writes Morning Pages nearly every day. She coaches unhappy attorneys on what to do with what emerges from their Morning Pages. If you want some help figuring that out, Jennifer offers discounted sample sessions. Schedule yours by emailing her at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com.

Feel like you’re walking around with a flashing Fake Lawyer sign?

I experienced that feeling, oh, pretty constantly my first few years of law practice, and fairly often from year 4 until I finally wised up and quit after 8 years of trying to be something I wasn’t. I remember a more experienced attorney and friend telling me that everyone feels that way the first few years. She meant well, I know she did.

But my friend was wrong, at least about me and law. When I finally, finally started doing something I had actual inherent abilities and genuine interest in, writing for a living, WOW. Suddenly I understood how people could work hard all day, every day and not feel like the walking dead by Thursday afternoon. It was because I didn’t have to fight myself and my inclinations every working hour of every day.

The Wrong Work = Constant Energy Drain

Particularly if you went straight from college to law school and are unhappy with law, you likely have no idea how much of your energy you put into fighting yourself simply to get your work done. It’s like having 2 or 3 jobs, really: The actual job, plus the one where you are fighting yourself. If you are really a fish out of water, like I was, working completely against my INFP type, that second job can feel like 2 jobs, too. (The third job is the one where you try to recover from the toxic law firm environment you most likely are working in.)

Here’s the real tip-off that you’re faking law: Inconsistent performance. Yes, you can do the work. Sometimes. When you can summon up the mental stamina, the stars are in proper alignment, you have had enough sleep/caffeine/time away from work/whatever. And the mix of what it takes to produce decent, let alone inspired work, is a moving target.

In other words, when your obsession with Angry Birds is more compelling than the deadline that you know you’re not going to meet if you don’t start working on that project within the next 8 hours, you’re faking law.

I bring this up because there was a very interesting set of questions posed in the comments to the Lizard Brain Attack post from a few weeks ago. One poster asked if I ever reached a point, after a few years, where I just wanted to ask “please God make this end.” Truly, when it comes to the actual work I do and have done, the answer is no, not at all.

Now I will say that there have been some ancillary things to the core of my post-law jobs that have driven me nuts. My first post-law job was fantastic, except for the toxic psycho-boss that went with it. But in hindsight actually I’m fairly grateful for that situation, because I could otherwise easily have stayed at that place and not gone on to work on two magazines, work that I really adored. And, the politics at another place in particular would have driven a Puritan to drink to excess.

But none of those drained me the way that law did. Not even close.

So how do you pick a direction to even try? I’ll cover that in my next post.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who has now spent more time not practicing law than she did practicing it. She helps other attorneys who want to start down that same kind of path, to work they really enjoy and relish. She offers discounted sample sessions—get yours today by contacting Jennifer at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com.

Does the shininess make up for the hole in your soul?

And yes, I mean even some of you who want out of law and into something else more satisfying. The ones who say to themselves, or to me, how they cannot possibly look for a job that would pay them significantly less cash than they rake in now.

Money is a huge bugaboo for many lawyers. They really lock themselves tightly into those golden, shiny handcuffs because of their beliefs about money and its substitutes. For example, here’s one thought train I hear:

Client: I need a job that pays close to what my law firm job pays, because I have a huge mortgage.

Me: Why did you decide to tie yourself to such a huge mortgage?

Client: Because we need to be in the neighborhood we’re in because of the schools.

Me: Isn’t there another nearby neighborhood that’s cheaper with schools that are still pretty good?

Client: No, we couldn’t do that—our kids won’t have a future if they go to a lesser school.

Right. Because there can’t possibly be better personality or learning style fits in schools with slightly less glowing test scores (the measure of all human knowledge and worth, after all), and kids can’t possibly go to fairly crappy public schools in Eastern Kentucky and still go to a top 10 law school. Just sayin’.

Selling the McMansion Lifestyle

What if you got off the prestige/ conspicuous consumption/ externalization train, and thought about your life through the lens of the things that are important to your soul, rather than the things that you make important out of fear?

I ask this kind of question of clients all the time, but I thought I’d bring it up because of this great story that ran in the New York Times recently. An Atlanta family sold their house, which sounded McMansionish, substantially downsized, and put half the proceeds toward charity.

You want to know the really astonishing thing? They did it because their then-14 year old daughter wanted to and basically pestered them into doing it. She and her family were driving in Atlanta, when she saw a homeless man on one side of them, and a shiny Mercedes on the other. She was struck by how if the person with the Mercedes had spent less money on the car, he could have easily fed the homeless man.

And then, consistent with that value to help others in this world, she bugged the living daylights out of her parents until the family collectively decided that they could downsize their stuff and give a large chunk of it away.

Just Do It, For Crying Out Loud

If you start looking beyond what your lack and attack monster spouts, you might see some startling things. You might start valuing things that are important to you, and acting in support of those values, rather than worshipping at the altar of money.

As Martin Seligman and others (link to TED talk, 24 mins well spent) have shown, money does not lead to happiness. Connecting with your authentic self, and living that self’s purpose, does.

You can start anywhere in your life with this process: health, family/relationships, spirituality, leisure/hobby time, renewal/rejuvenation, or mind. Or, since you’re here, maybe you could start with a career that makes you glow first. The money you need will follow. Just don’t try to lead with it.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who coaches lawyers on connecting with what they truly value, and then helps them chase after it. Are you in the race? Contact Jennifer at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com for a discounted sample session to see if coaching with her will help you get out of the rat race and onto a meaningful path.

New Year's Resolutions gone up in a flames? Try finding the fire within.

The find-a-new-job-by-March-1 resolution? Looking doubtful if you haven’t even updated your resume yet. The spend-more-time-at-the-gym resolution? Right, I’m not gonna ask. The be-a-nicer-person resolution? Went out the window when you got stuck reviewing documents in a windowless room for a month.

And that is wonderful. Now that all of that externalizing has burned itself out, it’s time to get down to what’s truly important in your life and your work. Especially if you are an unhappy lawyer reading this blog and wanting a career that satisfies you rather than sucks the life out of you. In other words, it’s time to light your fire from within.

How do you figure out what’s important and what’s more of the New Year’s Resolution approach to change—you know, the approach that’s destined to fail in a few short weeks?

Start by asking yourself some questions. I use some of these with new clients:

• What do you want more of in your life? Do you know? What would it take for you to know?
• What do you feel called to do, regardless of whether it sounds sane or profitable to you right now? You may not have a precise label, but do you have a general yen?
• What do you need to clear out of your life, so there’s room for more of what you want to come in?
• What lights you up? What drags you down?
• And most importantly, do you have at least a fuzzy outline of a path to get to the place that warms your heart? Are you making at least a small step or two of progress on that path every week? If not, are the reasons really temporary, or is this actually stuckness masquerading as a temporary circumstance?

Spring is just around the corner. It’s hard to be a pessimist when those warm days start caressing you. Use that energy to your benefit, and get going on setting your life on fire with possibility and hope.

Don’t know how? Drop me an email, and I can help you gather the firewood.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who hasn’t done New Year’s Resolutions for years. She coaches unhappy lawyers on setting life and work resolutions they adore keeping. Email her at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com if you need some help setting your lasting resolutions.

Pessimism can turn your dreams to ghosts. That's no way to live.

Pessimists also have a much more objective view of reality than optimists, according to Dr. Martin Seligman in his 1990 book Learned Optimism.

Seligman posits that most depressed people are also, not coincidentally, pessimists. Just because you’re a pessimist does not necessarily mean you are depressed, but the evidence is clear that pessimists are far more likely

to become depressed than optimists. Statistically, most depressives score somewhere on the pessimist side of the scale, and most nondepressed people score on the optimist side of the scale. (You can find out where you are on the pessimism/optimism continuum by taking this questionnaire from Seligman’s website at Penn, where he collects anonymized data for his research.)

Pessimists—Including Lawyers—See Reality More Clearly

Seligman relates an experiment conducted by Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson, in which subjects were either given control over turning on a light via a button, or they were given a button but no control over the light—it just turned on randomly. The subjects were then asked to rate how much control they had over the light. The subjects who had been previously classified as depressed—likely pessimists—were highly accurate about how much control they had over the light.

The nondepressed, presumably more optimistic subjects, were accurate about their level of control when they in fact had control. But surprisingly, the nondepressed subjects said they had far more control than they actually did when they were in fact helpless to control the light. This pattern of reality distortion by optimists has been borne out in lots of research.

Benign Reality Distortion—Better Than You Think

So for an optimist, or a pessimist in an optimistic frame of mind, “[r]eality is benignly distorted to give dreams room to flourish,” as Seligman rather charmingly puts it. For my money, that’s the key reason pessimists need to work their way toward optimism: If you’re joined at the hip to the harsh reality that life can routinely dish up, your dreams don’t have a place to exist. They die. Ultimately, refusing to dream costs you a life worth living. A life without dreams is a gray, dim walking death.

Optimism can be characterized as “the capacity to act on the hope that reality will turn out better than it usually does.” (L.O., p. 108) Optimism contains the seeds of our best lives and work—plans, dreams, ideas that make us and our world better and happier. Remember in the 1980s, only a few mad dreamers dared to conceive of a world where all computers could be connected. Now, we have iPhones and Blackberries and mountains of information from the profound to the ridiculous literally at our fingertips.

Pessimists, who look only at what seems realistically possible—as in, has it happened before—don’t usually innovate. They may be visited with wild and wonderful dreams, and maybe even pursue those dreams a bit, but when the going gets tough, they give up. That voice in their head tells them that good people never win, the other shoe is about to drop, that Murphy’s law always prevails, that style always trumps substance—whatever their pessimistic explanation usually is.

How Objectivity Screws You

But I know lawyers are fond, very fond indeed, of objectivity and accurate perceptions. I’m not suggesting that you aim to completely turn off your pessimistic views, especially when they actually serve you well. If you’re in a situation where the cost of failure is high, like a pilot, a surgeon, or yes even a lawyer advising a client about whether to omit information from an SEC filing, a ruthlessly accurate view of the situation is key.

What happens to pessimistic lawyers, though, is their doom-and-gloom outlook bleeds into all parts of their lives, not just the parts of work where it’s useful. Pessimism creates the thought/reality that if a date doesn’t go well, it’s because you’re not loveable. If you have a fight with your spouse or significant other, you’re going to break up. If you don’t get a response to your resume, it’s because you’re completely unqualified for any job outside of law, and you’ll never be able to escape.

Still think you prefer to live in the deadly accurate world of pessimism all the time? Here are some of Seligman’s other findings about pessimism (L.O., p. 113):

• Pessimism promotes depression;
• Pessimism produces inertia rather than activity in the face of setbacks;
• Pessimism feels bad subjectively—blue, down, worried, anxious;
• Pessimism is self-fulfilling. Pessimists don’t persist in the face of challenges, and therefore fail more frequently—even when success is attainable;
• Pessimism is associated with poor physical health; and
• Even when pessimists are right and things turn out badly, they still feel worse than optimists. Their explanatory style now converts the predicted setback into a disaster, a disaster into a catastrophe.

Now you long-time readers know I don’t come here and tell you a bunch of sobering stuff without some solutions in mind. So next time, I’ll talk about containment strategies for keeping pessimism in its place, and embracing optimism during an alternative legal career search/quest to change your life.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer and recovering pessimist. She coaches attorneys on giving up pessimism and getting resiliency and a better life. Try coaching and see the difference in your own life—a free, no-obligation sample session is yours for the asking. Contact her at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com to schedule yours today.

Don't let pessimism muzzle your life and career dreams.

But there is a high cost of pessimism on life happiness and functionality, as Seligman discusses at length in his earlier work, Learned Optimism. Pessimists are more prone to depression (hello, lawyers have a 3 times higher rate of depression than the general population) and ill health, among many other things.

Also, pessimists don’t persevere at the same rate as optimists, which means pessimists often don’t achieve goals that are achievable. Like, say, finding an alternative legal career that gives you fulfillment and high satisfaction.

The chief way that pessimism shows up is as learned helplessness, according to Seligman. The way he discovered the connection between learned helplessness and pessimism is fascinating, so bear with me.

Learned Helplessness Produces Whimpering Dogs

Seligman’s career lightning bulb moment came when he walked into the middle of an experiment which was going badly. The research team was trying to show that dogs would, when given the opportunity, escape from electric shocks they were receiving in a box-like enclosure. There was a low divider between the box the dogs were in, where the shocks were, and another compartment which was shock-free. But the dogs weren’t trying to escape. Instead, they just lay down and whimpered.

Seligman divined that the problem was that the dogs had been taught, in a previous part of the experiment, that there was nothing they could do to alleviate the shocks. So when they started receiving shocks in this new phase, they didn’t investigate whether the other side of the box was shock-free. They had been taught to be helpless, and that there was nothing they could do to alleviate their suffering.

Of course, not everyone saw the dog’s behavior through this lens, so Seligman and some colleagues devised another set of experiments. Dogs were divided into three groups. One group received no conditioning. Another group were given shocks, but were also given a means to escape the shocks—pushing a button with their noses. The third group were shocked, but not given a way to stop the shocks.

Each dog was then put in the divided box, and given shocks. Of the unconditioned group, all of them investigated and discovered they could escape the compartment they were in, and did. Of the second group, which had been taught that they could stop the shocks, all of them investigated and jumped to the other compartment. In the third group, which had been shocked but not given any means to stop the shocks, 6 of 8 simply sat down and whimpered. They didn’t even try to investigate whether they could escape. That’s right, two-thirds of all of the dogs who had been taught they couldn’t control the situation just lay down and whimpered.

Helpless People Act Like Whimpering Dogs, Too

People, as it turns out, reacted similarly in a slightly different situation. Rather than inescapable shocks, the groups were put in a room (one at a time) where they were exposed to a loud noise, and given the task of turning off the noise. One group could turn off the noise if they discovered the right sequence of buttons, while the other group could do nothing to turn off the noise. After that conditioning, the subjects were placed in a different room. When their hand was on one side of a box, there was a loud whooshing noise, but that noise could easily be stopped by moving the hand to the other side of the divided box.

Two-thirds of the subjects who had been taught they were helpless to stop the loud noise in the first situation did not even attempt moving their hand to the other side of the box. They simply sat there, taking the noisy assault.

You do see the parallels between abusive behavior dished out in many law firms and your belief you can’t find a rewarding job, don’t you?

3 P’s of Pessimism

What does this have to do with pessimism? Quite a lot, actually. Pessimism is the belief that you are helpless to improve your lot. When bad things happen, pessimists believe those events are

• Personal: The event or situation is due to some flaw or mistake of theirs.
• Pervasive: Unlimited, space-wise—the situation, trait or event bleeds into everything; it has no boundaries or limits.
• Permanent: Unlimited, time-wise—the situation is not going to change, no matter what.

Are you seeing yourself yet?

Here’s a pessimistic, drumbeat-of-doom example that I hear a lot: I don’t have any job skills except law, so I’m always going to have to be a lawyer, even though I hate it.

Have you, perhaps, said that or some version of it to yourself?

It’s personal: you lack skills, and that’s your fault. It’s pervasive: nothing in law could be other than hateful and unpleasant. It’s permanent: you’re always going to have to do it.

Optimists, as you might expect, harbor the exact opposite beliefs when bad things happen: it’s due to something beyond their control, is a limited circumstance, and it’s temporary: I didn’t get that job because the interviewer was in a bad mood and hadn’t even looked at my resume. See how temporary, limited, and non-personal that is?

Good Events Are Temporary

Pessimists differ from optimists in their interpretation of good events, too. They think about good events the way that optimists think about bad events: that good things happen independent of anything the pessimist does, for a specific reason, and won’t last.

So a pessimist gets a job offer and thinks, “Wow, the other candidates must have really blown their interviews on the one day I was really on my game. If I accept this job, how long before they figure out I’m not all that?” See how impersonal (the other candidates did something), limited (if they hadn’t failed, things would be different), and temporary (I won’t have this job for long once they know the truth) that view is?

Start observing yourself for statements that use “always” and “never.” Listen to yourself when you explain why something did or didn’t work. I promise it will be eye-opening.

Next time, we’ll dig a bit deeper into what pessimism does and doesn’t do for you in your life and work.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer and recovering pessimist. She likes to remind her clients that it’s not how far you go, but how far you’ve come, that makes the real difference for their lives. Try coaching and see the difference in your own life—a free, no-obligation sample session is yours for the asking. Contact her at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com to schedule yours today.

Is the bluebird of unhappiness flying at you all the time? Maybe it's your pessimism talking. Image courtesy Stockvault.net.

In other words, pessimism is trying to have its way with me, yet again. Pessimism is one of those habits that recovering lawyers tend to drag around with them, even when they’re out of law.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately about pessimism, so of course that means you’re going to hear a lot about it shortly. The uber executive summary is that pessimism kills and wounds a lot of searches for dream jobs, dream careers, and dream lives. Particularly for those who are unhappy lawyers, addressing your level of pessimism is key to moving forward and ditching that unhappiness for something much better.

Are you a pessimist? Chances are if you’re a lawyer, you are. (That’s not just me pontificating; there’s data, which I’ll talk about next time.) You can take this survey—from Dr. Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness Project—and find out. Then come back for the next installment and find out the consequences of pessimism for your alternative legal career search and for your life.

Or, start reading Learned Optimism, Seligman’s 1990 classic that presents tons of interesting research on the effects of pessimism and optimism on people’s lives. Yes, that would include lawyers. (Seligman is, in fact, married to a lawyer, so he is not blind to the pessimism that infects the legal profession.)

Get ready for some eye-opening stats on the effects of pessimism on just about everything in life. This is gonna rock your socks!

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer and recovering pessimist. She likes to remind her clients that it’s not how far you go, but how far you’ve come, that makes the real difference for their lives. Try coaching and see the difference in your own life—a free, no-obligation sample session is yours for the asking. Contact her at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com to schedule yours today.

Your inner lizard looks very scary when it is scared you're going to change and reduce its power.

Walking away from the so-called sure thing is a great way to find out what you really believe about the purpose of work. Most lawyers are fearful/risk-averse kinds of creatures. When you’re fearful, you are focused on the survival fears being constantly broadcast by your lizard brain. That means that jobs for you are going to be about money, i.e., survival.

I’ve touched on lizard brain before. It is an actual, ancient part of the brain, the amygdala. It’s responsible for broadcasting what Martha Beck calls “lack and attack” messages

—-food/shelter isn’t adequate, or you’re about to be attacked by something that threatens your life or limbs. The amygdala broadcasts these messages fairly relentlessly. While those messages can be useful, in our modern age where actual scarcity and starvation are pretty rare, as is being hunted for food by lions and such, the lack and attack messages usually get twisted into things like “I’m never going to be loved” or “I’ll never find a job that pays enough and makes me happy.”

The good news, the New York Times reports, is that doing things like meditation can decrease the amount of gray matter in the amygdala and increase the amount of gray matter in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory. The upshot of studies so far is that Buddhist-type mindfulness meditation produces lower blood pressure and longer attention spans. Yes, there are ways to circumvent your inner lizard. (I talk about a lot of lizard circumvention frequently—see any post where I discuss how to let yourself have fun.)

Yet the act of walking away from a high-paying job that is eating your soul away can still seem the height of stupidity. As Seth Godin recently pointed out in his blog, “It’s unreasonable to walk away from a good gig in today’s economy, even if you want to do something brave and original.” Unreasonable to a lizard brain, anyway.

But if you want to do something that sets your life and work on fire, that gives you freedom to use your gifts, that makes you want to get up in the morning, you need to do that scary, unreasonable thing. Your very soul is begging you to do it, in fact.

Worrying about the fact that other people are struggling is a desperate gambit from your inner lizard to keep you stuck, because your inner lizard is very, very scared that you might do that unreasonable thing. So the lizard, clever devil, appeals to one of your higher, noble sensibilities: concern for others.

Thing is, unless you are using that BigLaw salary to give buckets of money away to the underprivileged, staying in BigLaw isn’t going to help someone who is out of work. Nor is it going to transfer your talents, skills and abilities to another job-seeker. As another commenter noted, leaving BigLaw means another BigLaw opportunity opens up; a job for a less-skilled worker does not.

Starting a new business venture might open up a new job for you and someone else, and eventually many someone elses, though. I’m just sayin’.

In other words, tell your lizard to go take a nap. You have some important work to do—-chasing your unreasonably joyful dreams.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who tries her best to do something unreasonably fun at least weekly, over and above the unreasonable but highly rewarding business of coaching attorneys from fear into joy. If you’re ready to chase your career and life dreams, schedule a discounted, no-obligation sample coaching session by emailing jalvey@jenniferalvey.com.

If you’re tired of your crazy life merry-go-round, you can get off. Starting now. Really. Photo courtesy Stockvault.com.

I see this in clients (and in your comments) often. “When I get past this, then I’ll have time to work on getting a new job.”

Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun, tells this story. She went to her guru to explain that she had to take a break from her training, because she was moving, going through a divorce, and she needed to deal with yet other things that were going on in her life. Once she got past these transitions, she said, she would be fine, and would resume her training.

The guru smiled at her and said, “All of life is transitory. When you accept that, you’ll be fine.”

Buddhist monks and nuns are wise people.

Are You Waiting for the Promised Land?

Most Westerners, especially Americans, tend to view life as a series of obstacles to overcome, and when they do, they will arrive in the Promised Land. The Promised Land can be many things to many people: a glittery alluring new job, one true love, a baby born, financial stability, inner peace—you get the idea. I’m not sure that this attitude stems from Christianity, but it might. It doesn’t really matter where this attitude comes from; what matters is that we recognize how limiting it is as we seek change in our careers and our lives.

If you believe that you must get through a big project at work, like a brief or a deal, before you can take steps to get out of your unhappy legal career, when do you actually find time to take some of those steps?

In most people’s lives, there’s always something that seems urgent but isn’t actually all that important in hindsight. Still, you tend to lurch from crisis to crisis, thinking that when things calm down, you can also calm down and find the time to think about revising your resume or networking. And just when things seem to be calming down, another crisis erupts. I see this happen to people who are adrenaline junkies or are almost entirely fear-motivated. They often unconsciously create the cycle.

Stepping Off the Crisis Management Merry-go-round

You can change that cycle, whether or not you create it. What if, instead, you got off the crisis management merry-go-round and started making the truly important things the ones you scheduled first? And then scheduled your other obligations around those top priorities, rather than the other way around?

I saw a great visual demonstration of this principle years ago, at a Franklin Covey time management class. I’m not a Franklin Covey fan, because that system focuses on breaking down tasks to the nth degree and tracking the hell out of them, and as an INFP, I’m constitutionally incapable of doing that.

But the principle itself was and is great: Make sure that the long-term important stuff, like relationships, renewal, and improving yourself and your community get top priority. The rest, you can either fit in, or it wasn’t really important to begin with.

Small Steps, Big Changes—Now

So even if you’re in the middle of some gruesome briefing schedule or an ugly breakup, you might:

• Make it a point to meditate or pray for half an hour 3 times a week;
• Spend 20 minutes daily revising your legal resume to look like a business resume (that time would include researching how to do that, too);
• Make your creative work an immovable weekly block in your schedule;
• Attend a live CLE lunch or other networking opportunity at least monthly;
• Walk, go to the gym, or take a yoga or pilates class (or whatever floats your boat) at least twice a week;
• Make your coaching or therapy sessions an immovable weekly or biweekly object in your calendar;
• Spend an hour volunteering; or
• Read for pleasure for 20 minutes daily.

You could, yanno, choose more than one thing to make a priority over the garbage in your work life (like answering pointless email chains). Even one of these actions, done regularly, will send a powerful message to your soul that you respect and honor it.

Martha Beck calls the commitments to the long-term important stuff “mouse transitions.” At times, you won’t see how seemingly small commitments are moving you much of anywhere. You are the little mouse, negotiating around the stuff of life with a limited view. It’s easy to lose sight of how these small daily choices help you toward your best career and life. So every once in a while, maybe every 3 months, become the eagle, and see how far you’ve come on your road to an alternative legal career.

Start today. Really, you can do this, I promise. You just need to take one step into the new.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who helps attorneys focus on taking steps in the direction of their dream life and work. Think you could use some help with that? Try a discounted, no-obligation sample coaching session and find out. Email jalvey@jenniferalvey.com to schedule yours—today.

Pull some joy talismans into your life, and watch yourself catch fire and move toward your dreams.

As I started to sort through my clothes, I noticed something: My clothes from law school and my first couple years of practice were bright and colorful. There was the red wool sheath that looked awesome until I gained weight. There was the Monet-looking blue, purple and pink print party dress that I loved. Alas, outgrown and too young-girl looking.

But the clothes I had bought from about my third year of practice and beyond were increasingly safe and boring. Dark suits, grey dresses, cream and white blouses. I don’t remember pink of any shade—and it’s my favorite color. Nor was there any shade of teal or red, my other go-to colors.

So there it was, the physical evidence of what law was doing to my soul.

I’m betting you wouldn’t have to look very hard in your life to see a similar pattern of evidence. Care to share in the comments below?

Working from the Outside In

Here’s the cool thing: While internal change gets reflected on the outside, it works in the other direction, too. You can create internal change from making different external choices. That’s the whole basis for cognitive behavioral therapy, after all.

If you add things in your life that give you joy, guess what? You might just be more joyful.

If you don’t know what brings you joy, go looking. Give yourself permission to spend an hour one week, maybe taking an actual lunch hour. When you’re looking, be open. Tell your rational brain to go take a nap or something. It’s been working overtime anyway.

Here’s how you find a joy talisman. Go to a store, museum, or even a pasture. Doesn’t matter, as long as the place calls to you. The call doesn’t need to be loud, but persistent is good.

• If you see a skein of yarn that calls to you, buy it—even if you don’t knit, crochet, do needlework or whatever.
• If you find some polished stones that pull you toward them as if magnetized—get them. Find out later where they are pulling you.
• If you see a journal or some paper that makes you feel a bit giddy with possibility—grab it. It doesn’t matter if you have an actual plan for it yet.

The trick here is that your joy talisman doesn’t need to carry a big price tag. You just need a small reminder of what brings you joy, one that you can see, touch, hear, taste or smell.

Let yourself go there, to that place you tell yourself you’re not allowed to visit. Put the physical manifestations of joy into your life, and see how the spark spreads fire and passion to your life.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer whose wardrobe sports her favorite colors: pink, red, teal and purple.  There is still some black, because, hey, it goes with everything! She coaches attorneys on restoring their unique joys to their lives and work. Email her today for a discounted, no-obligation sample coaching session to get more help finding a joy talisman for yourself: jalvey@jenniferalvey.com.

Get in touch with your creative side and smile as broadly as this, er, well whatever it is!

For depressed lawyers, the stakes involved in this pondering can seem very high indeed, if they suspect (or know) that their daily work and life has little meaning for them. The idea of a career change or life change can be deeply frightening, and act like a trigger or a multiplier to an existing depression.

Meaning is one of those things that depressed people usually feel they lack in their lives. “Feelings of worthlessness” is always on those checklists of depression symptoms. A life that feels meaningless, feels worthless.

And while that feeling of a meaningless, worthless life is often the illusion that depression projects, with many lawyers, there’s some hard, cold reality behind it. The objective, logical, detached thinking that law demands often silences that need we have for meaning in our work and lives. Meaning lives in our emotions, not our logic.

What Meaningful Looks Like

Exactly what is meaningful differs for each person. Some of my clients find work more meaningful when they are out in the field working directly with clients or witnesses, rather than in the office enduring conference calls. Others find meaning by communicating an important message well in a brief.

Many lawyers enjoy and find meaning in helping a client achieve a goal that feels worthy to them—keeping someone out of jail, helping an entrepreneur avoid a regulatory quagmire that would have doomed a really super business idea, or vindicating a client whose intellectual property was stolen by a competitor.

If your work doesn’t carry a hefty dose of inherent meaning for you, that lack can be the trigger for depression, rather than the symptom of it. If your work actually violates your values—those things that have the most meaning for you—it’s almost sure to send you into a funk eventually. I see that with my clients consistently. They are unhappy, or depressed, because their work lacks meaning for them.

If you’re depressed but there are existing pieces of your life that hold meaning, that’s a relatively easy fix—find ways to increase the size of those pieces in your work or life. If you find meaning in helping the underdog, add some pro bono work. If you value interacting and collaborating with people, volunteer to do training or mentoring.

(The list of people who need mentoring is endless—less experienced lawyers, homeless or economically disadvantaged people who need basic job searching skills, at-risk youth, and college students trying to find their niche are just a few ideas.)

Sometimes simply cutting back on hours and spending time with family and friends will add the meaning you need to lift your depression.

Ignore Those Creative Urges at Your Peril

Many times, though, it’s the work itself that lacks meaning, no matter how you slice it or try to re-arrange your work life. Particularly when you ignore your creative side, routine legal work will never have enough meaning to combat unhappiness or depression. You just can’t get the ratio of creative: routine/boring/tedious work high enough.

All humans are born with a great capacity for some type of creative work, whether that be problem-solving, designing buildings, developing innovative products or approaches to business, or some type of self-expression such as writing, painting or performance. We tend to see creativity as the making of art, but it’s much more than that. It’s seeing old problems with a new set of eyes, of wondering “What if we tried doing this in a different way . . .? What could make this better . . . ?”

Law, in contrast, values applying the same old solutions to new problems. That’s the DNA of law. For those with a creative bent, that DNA can feel like a death knell to meaning in their lives.

Lawyers whose creative gifts are centered around problem-solving will find it easier to add meaning to their work life in law, but lawyers whose creative gifts revolves around self-expression or making new things will have a hard slog of it. The greater your creative gifts, the harder it is to endure work without creative meaning. Your soul protests vehemently and doesn’t really care about what society thinks about stable, large paychecks.

What does that vehement protest look like? Often, depression. I don’t for a moment think that every depressed lawyer is a blocked creative—but many are, if my clients are any indication. Once they start getting in touch with that creativity, their lives go from stuck to moving and then to amazing. When they start adding things that have deep meaning for them—creating in some form—their depression often lifts or lessens markedly.

The hardest thing, as anyone who suffers from depression knows, is getting started. So start small. Add meaning in tablespoons, and suddenly you will find it in your life by the gallon.

Here are a few ways you could start to add meaning to your life:

• Build something. If you find meaning in problem-solving, get some Legos and figure out how to build a tree, a piano or whatever appeals to you. (Legos, incidentally, are now way cool. There are Harry Potter and Star Wars Lego sets, among many other brilliant ones. You could start with a kit and go from there. If you live in a city where there’s a Lego store, go and pick up lots of random pieces like doors, windows, and curves.)
• Add beauty. If you find meaning in beauty, add some to your life. Put some art on the walls, or find a lovely object you can put on your desk or a bookshelf you look at daily. You could even get some pretty paper and craft some origami. A pretty scarf or unusual tie could add a big lift to your life. Even colorful or unusual office supplies can boost your creative spirit.
• Play with clay. If making something new holds meaning for you, get some polymer clay—sold as Sculpey or Fimo, and comes in a cacophony of colors plus metallics and glittery versions—and make a coaster. Or make some worry beads. Or whatever else appeals. If you can’t seem to create something for yourself, then do it for a child. Children love presents, period, and they’ll love that you made something just for them.
• Practice kindness. If kindness and compassion top the meaning scale for you, start slipping a few dollars to a homeless person regularly. Or volunteer monthly at a soup kitchen. Or make it a practice to smile and greet people who look like they’re having a bad day.

Adding meaning to your life can be a lot cheaper than therapy and medication, and have some profound effects. Living a meaningful life can be a powerful part of your arsenal in fighting depression. And the downside? I can’t think of one.

A version of this article first appeared on http://lawyerswithdepression.wordpress.com/.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who practiced law at 3 firms before she finally, at law firm #3, began developing her creative talents. Her life has been much better since. She offers discounted sample coaching sessions to attorneys who want to explore their creativity but don’t know how to get started. She can be reached at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com.

If you don’t like the standard-issue legal career you purchased, send it back and find a better alternative.

Even the phrase “alternative legal career” acknowledges this truth; the alternative is to the law firm legal career. So government jobs, in-house counsel jobs, even solo/micro firm jobs fall outside the product’s most narrow definition, though they are still law practice. Something that doesn’t even require a law degree is really alternative and out there, to most lawyers.

Product Acquisition: Legal Career

Our culture really worships productization. It’s an externalized way of experiencing life, though. See thing, want thing, get thing. No questions needed. It’s not about process at all, it’s about checklists. That’s all well and good if the products happen to suit you, to match your inner career needs, for example.

But if there’s a mismatch between the job product and your inner needs—well, look at your current situation, unhappy lawyer. You’ve followed the career assembly instructions handed out by those whose aim is telling you how to get the standard product more efficiently. You’re using resume tips, networking strategies and interview skills designed to help you purchase the traditional legal career product.

What if your true talents and deepest dreams lie outside the law practice career product? You won’t even be able to see them, to know what they are, if you keep trying to ape the traditional job product acquisition methods.

Bad Idea: Replication Methods in Art and Careers

Consider this from a completely non-business, non-law, non-career perspective: kid art projects. Bear with me, I promise it’s relevant.

Last summer, my local library sponsored weekly craft projects for kids. Parents were expected to stay and keep an eye on/help their little darlings. The library staff did an excellent job of showing a general idea of how to do the project, and gave lots of options and materials for kids to do their own thing. The staff was very encouraging of kids who wanted to, in effect, color outside the project lines.

The parents were a whole ‘nother story. Most were quite focused on helping their child get the project “right”—making it look like the sample, except maybe a different color or some other small difference. Parents steered their kids away from strange color combinations, non-sensical or unattractive combinations of elements.

These parents never allowed their child the chance to simply experiment and see what appealed to them, or try something different that wasn’t guaranteed to deliver a pretty art project product. And sadly, most of the kids went right along and didn’t protest when their parents starting hovering and suggesting that really, this color or paper pattern would look nicer. Those kids had certainly gotten the message that the point of art was to replicate what’s always been done. To me, that’s a travesty.

Do You Really Want the Law Career Product?

Similarly, it’s a travesty when talented, highly educated adults ignore their inclinations, interests and dreams because they can’t fit them into the paltry product offerings of a standard-issue legal career.

It’s this productization approach to life that produces the deer-in-the-headlights look on your face when I start asking you about your dreams. What do dreams have to do with the product you want, a stable job that pays well with people who aren’t assholes? Truly, most unhappy lawyers are so beaten down that attaining that kind of job product seems like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Well, it’s not if you aren’t actually suited to being a practicing lawyer. For those whose personalities and interests actually do match what’s involved in daily law practice, yes that’s a great dream. There are people who genuinely enjoy the work that is daily law practice:

• Drafting documents that are incremental updates to a template
• Memorializing conversations
• Researching changes in the law
• Applying abstract theories to a specific situation
• Reviewing documents to glean necessary facts
• Crafting arguments and tactics
• Negotiating
• Explaining the law to clients and analyzing how to improve or ameliorate the client’s legal situation
• Managing a high number of disagreeable people, such as opposing counsel and often colleagues

Those tasks are the heart of law practice. If you truly enjoy those things—the thought of doing them makes you want to get up in the morning—stay in law. Find a better environment if your current one is making you unhappy. You can probably use the standard legal job search product tools to do that.

From Replication to Creation

If, though, the thought of doing those and similar activities makes you want to gouge your eyes out, stop shopping for the standard legal career product. A better environment is not going to solve your unhappiness with your career.

Instead, you need to create your career. To do that, you’ll have to understand what activities bring you joy and satisfaction. You’ll need to reframe your skill set and experiences, and see them in a different light. Then, you’ll spend time using those analytic skills you have in spades, and dig into industries that actually interest you. See where your interests, experiences and talents collide there. Be open to different job products, rather than set on one specific one.

Is this easy? No way. But ask yourself, how easy is it to drag yourself daily to a job that sucks your soul away, drains your energy, and makes you miserable to be around? That sounds like a product that needs to be returned pronto, if you ask me.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who coaches unhappy lawyers to find the things that bring them joy in life and career. Only then does she have them go shop  in the job and life market. See if coaching will help with your job product search–try a discounted, no-obligation sample coaching session. Email jalvey@jenniferalvey.com to set yours up today.

The glass test is actually pretty useful.

But if you want to get the heck out of law, or even just be a happier, healthier person while practicing law, dialing down the pessimism is crucial.

I’m working my way through Learned Optimism, which Seligman originally published in 1990. It should be required reading for any lawyer.

One of the, oh, 53 gazillion really interesting things Seligman discusses is the role of internal explanatory style in creating a pessimistic or optimistic outlook. Explanatory style is how you explain events to yourself. Here’s a personal example.

Yesterday I attended a lunch at a group where I didn’t know a soul.
I was a bit late, and so I missed most of the pre-lunch chit-chat. I did chat a bit with the folks at my table, but I had definitely missed the best opportunity to gather some business cards. After the program was over, some folks lingered, but most sped out to get back to the office. No one approached me or tried to draw me in to a conversation.

Here’s where explanatory style comes in. A decade ago, I promise you I would have explained my experience at the lunch like this: “I totally screwed this up. I should have told my client I just couldn’t talk longer today. I should have seen this coming and rescheduled her. I suck at scheduling and administrative details. I always mess networking things up. This group is obviously very tight and I doubt I’m ever going to be able to break in. This was a waste of time and money.”

My reaction yesterday? Pretty different. “Gosh, I wish I could have gotten here a few minutes earlier. Well, I did the best I could. Sometimes clients just need to talk. I liked the woman I was sitting next to, hope I see her again at the next lunch. Any lawyer who wears a bright pink raincoat is worth getting to know! Too bad she had to leave early, but I’ll get her card next time. And I did hand a card out to someone else who seemed interested in career coaching, who knows where that will lead. The folks in this group seem to be pretty tight and work together a lot outside it; I need to find a way to get to know them somehow. I think I’ll volunteer for the service project they’re doing next month. That will probably help.”

I’m fairly sure you don’t have to be the proverbial rocket scientist to see which explanatory style will help me more in growing my business.

Seligman makes the point that pessimism doesn’t necessarily drag people down into the pit day in and day out. But for those who tend toward pessimism, when something bad happens, that triggers them into a spiral chute of pessimism, possibly right into depression.

I highly recommend taking this optimism evaluation test, available on Seligman’s website at Penn. (Free registration is required before you can take the test.) And then pick up Learned Optimisim. Or, keep reading this blog, because I’m going to be writing a lot about the book.

Also, you could notice in your life some common things that trigger that internal downer speech. Often, they are situations where you have little direct control. I’ve noticed for me it’s stuff like:

• Traffic and parking. This was so much worse when I lived in the D.C. area. Every driver who cut me off was a jerk, the whole place was filled with jerks, and why do the jerks always come out on top and never have to pay for their sins? Yeah, healthy stuff like that! But telling.
• Waiting for return phone calls/emails. If someone like a friend, relative, or colleague didn’t call or email me back as soon as I expected, I invented all kinds of reasons why. They hate me, I’m not important to them, they’re so inconsiderate, etc. I’ve had to really work to not go there, or at least tell myself that they might have a deadline, an illness, or any one of 34 things that had nothing to do with me in the slightest.
• Job searching. Oh yeah, the biggie. If I didn’t get an interview, I was fooling myself that I had any marketable job skills. Or whatever I had was clearly not enough, and I would never be able to get a job like that. Or—well, you can probably fill in some blanks there, from your own internal dialogue.

So maybe you can spend a few days observing your own explanatory style. Many of those “truths” we believe about life aren’t so much universally true as self-fulfilling prophecy. See if you can spot a few of your own prophecies. It really will help in your search for a better job, in or outside of law.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer, which also means she’s a recovering pessimist. She coaches attorneys on rediscovering their optimism so they can lead fulfilling lives and find satisfying work. Jennifer offers discounted, no-obligation sample coaching sessions. See if coaching can help you–email jalvey@jenniferalvey.com to schedule your free session.

Image courtesy Stockvault.net.

I’ve also been thinking about the incivility of the workplace in general, and in law firms in particular, and how incivility there leads to strife everywhere in both our own lives and in society.

I’ve hesitated to post this on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, though, because to compare the sacrifices made in the civil rights movement by King and many, many others—who suffered being spat upon, beatings, jail time, and death—to those in the current workplace could easily trivialize the epic civil rights struggle.

But I decided to post anyway, because all injustice, large and small, sparks anger, fear and often, the desire for revenge. Which doesn’t exactly promote peace, civility, or tolerance. As Henry Louis Mencken said so famously, “If you want peace, work for justice.”

The Costs of Incivility

The net effect of incivility and verbal violence in the workplace has a huge effect on the peace and wellbeing of not only unhappy lawyers, but everyone else in the profession, those who toil in it who aren’t lawyers, and the ripple effect on all of their families, friends, and neighbors. That is quite a lot of people.

Robert Sutton, who wrote The No Asshole Rule, talks about the productivity effects of asshole behavior. The research is very clear that those who are directly bullied suffer markedly lower productivity and markedly higher absenteeism rates. And that’s disturbing and distressing itself.

Yet the effects of bullying or abusive behavior isn’t confined to the victims. Sutton recounts that in one study, while only 10% of Norwegian workers reported being bullied, the 27% who witnessed the bullying reported that their productivity was negatively affected, too. In another study, 73% of British workers who witnessed bullying (which was roughly 15% of the workforce) experienced increased stress, and 44% reported fearing they would become targets.

Incivility and Everyday Law Firm Life

What does this translate to in the legal workplace? A lot of closed-door conversations about how sucky and awful certain partners are to work for. A lot of time spent scouring job sites and revising resumes rather than working. A lot of stress (suppressed violence, really) taken home and misdirected at spouses and kids, or at the person who cut you off in traffic. A big toll on the immune system. A lot of turnover as attorneys and those who work for them desperately seek an environment that doesn’t impede their ability to just do their work.

There’s plenty of hate and fear in the workplace. Some underlings positively despise their bosses, often understandably, because they are treated with breathtaking callousness. I hear stories about partners in law firms calling associates “dummies,” accusing people who have chronic health conditions of being slackers, and partners making employees (lawyers and support staff) tell them how grateful they are to get Labor Day off.

If you have the time and inclination, you can find stories like these and much worse plastered all over the interwebz. That this kind of conduct is shrugged off as “the way it is” by most lawyers who aren’t its direct victim is a symptom of a gravely ill and unbalanced system. Or they may not like it and think it’s wrong, but they don’t step into the line of fire too often and challenge those bullies.

Real Peace, Not Settling

So what’s the solution? It depends on the kind of peace you’re after. Temporary or lasting? Yes, in the short-term maybe your life is more peaceful if you stop fighting against the massive amounts of injustice that occurs in law firms and other workplaces that lawyers inhabit. (Hierarchical ones, mostly—they are built for perpetuating injustice.)

In his 1956 sermon, “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious,” Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about the kind of peace he was pursuing. It was not the “peace of escapism, this peace that fails to confront the real issues of life, the peace that makes for stagnant complacency.” The kind of peace that was important to MLK was “not merely the absence of some negative force–war, tension, confusion, but it is the presence of some positive force–justice, goodwill . . .” He said “peace is not merely the absence of this tension, but the presence of justice.” And he was pretty powerfully specific about what that peace did and did not look like:

1) If peace means accepting second-class citizenship, I don’t want it.

2) If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I don’t want it.

3) If peace means being complacently adjusted to a deadening status quo, I don’t want peace.

4) If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated politically, humiliated and segregated, I don’t want peace. So in a passive, non-violent manner, we must revolt against this peace.

Consider the consequences in your life of a career in which you are often treated as a (highly paid) second-class citizen, have to keep your mouth shut when seeing ethical rules violated and co-workers mistreated, adjust to a status quo in which meaningless work always takes precedence over your real values, and in which you are subjecting yourself to economic exploitation.

Is there any peace in that?

Do you treat those around you impatiently, curtly, or worse, because of all the shit rolling downhill?

Do you have less to give to your family, community and world because your energy is constantly sapped by soul-deadening work and assholes?

Is the world missing out on your true talents and gifts because you insist on giving yourself over to highly paid, soul-numbing work you really can’t stand?

What kind of peace do you want in your life? What kind of peace can you start to create?

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who coaches attorneys to make changes in their lives that increase their peace. Find out if coaching can add peace to your life by scheduling a discounted, no-obligation sample coaching session. Email jalvey@jenniferalvey.com to schedule your session today.

Sure, you could grow extra arms to help get your work done. But insisting on real work/life balance might be easier.

Well, truth be told my inner critic, whose name is Guido and who acts and thinks like a thug, rolled his eyes and scoffed: “Law grads of any stripe can’t find jobs, and these overprivileged Gen Yers are worried they might have to work a lot? Puh-lease! They need some knocks from the school of life so they can get a clue.” You know, the standard Puritan reaction. Guido is good at it, since he adores all forms of authoritarianism, as most inner critics do.

We all know that working hard is a religious virtue amongst lawyers, most of whom also worship authority. I did not escape that inculcation; even now, when I absolutely know better, I too often default to workaholic guilt. Most recovering lawyers do.

Gender Equity, or Mass Insanity?

The article came at this issue as one of gender equity—women are “sabotaging” their paths to glory in law by turning up their noses at high-power, high-hour jobs for less demanding ones even when they don’t (supposedly) need to work fewer hours right at this moment. It was a not-so-veiled criticism of not going for the career gusto. That by not pursing that high-status path, these young women were missing out, ruining their career prospects right out of school and letting down pretty much all women in the profession.

So let’s see, what is that career gusto, anyway? Working endless hours, missing family time, sleep and oh, most of life, for very demanding clients who expect you to be chained to your Blackberry 24/7? Let’s not forget incessant dealing with asshole colleagues in your own firm, plus opposing counsel and all their charming behaviors.

It might be worth it if the work really thrilled you at least 40% of the time. But my sense is that most women in law are not thrilled with what they are doing even 20% of the time, from junior associate to senior partner. They may not hate what they’re doing, but they sure don’t love it.

Resistance Is Futile

You know that Schopenhauer quote about truth? First the new idea is mocked mercilessly, then staunchly opposed as if its adoption represents the end of life on Earth, then suddenly everyone says “Oh, well of course.”

I’ve seen this reaction to change in law firms before, and so have most of you Boomers and older Gen Xers. Telecommuting, flex schedules and casual dress policies leap to mind. Along with law firms offering attorney positions other than simple associate and partner. There’s even some allegedly part-time work in law firms, although it mostly looks like full-time work to the rest of the world. I suppose it’s something.

Remember the horror that law firms had about attorneys working from home? The shrill, accusatory questions abounded: How would you know they were working and not watching TV, napping or playing golf? People might lie about their billable hours if they’re not in the office. (Yeah, that never happens otherwise.) We need to be able to find people right away, and we can’t do that if they’re not in the office where they are findable. (Thank you Blackberry for rendering this one moot.)

The debates over law firm dress codes were even funnier. Lots of lengthy memos were written about precisely what kinds and colors of pants and shirts were acceptable; appropriate hemline and sleeve lengths were spelled out in more exquisite detail than at a Catholic high school; oh and let’s not forget the dangers of toe cleavage. Toe cleavage ranked right up there with Victorians and their obsession over women’s ankles. But I digress.

Real Work-Life Balance Would Screw Current Law Firm Economics—and That’s Good

The debate over long hours in law firms shouldn’t be confined to single, childless women lawyers. Every lawyer–young, middle-aged, or getting on; single, married, partnered or divorced; with or without kids, ailing relatives, or pets–needs a life that includes more than working, sleeping and eating. But right now, without the “excuse” of kids or sick parents, lawyers are at very best frowned at for putting any needs before billable hours. Usually it’s more that their loyalty gets questioned and their reviews start sucking.

Come on, law firms, get over yourselves. Even doctors have given up the ritualized hazing of residents. Doctors had some (thin) medical justification for requiring 3 days of sleep deprivation, i.e., following a patient’s progress and having one person who knew all about that patient’s history. Lawyers can’t even summon “we save lives,” they can only carry on about “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” Oh, the rallying cry of so many successful business practices, isn’t it?

If lawyers, new and experienced, started focusing on work-life balance as something just as important as money, think how the profession would change. Law firms might have to hire more attorneys, rather than getting one person to do 80 hour weeks. Gee, maybe it would even speed the demise of the billable hour system, and good riddance there.

Maybe if lawyers didn’t have to work as many hours, they might get enough rest and have time to explore non-law ideas and experiences. Then, they would have broader experiences and be able to come up with better solutions for their clients, rather than solutions that involved more inefficiency, like throwing billable hours at a problem rather than thinking it through, and engaging in pointless pissing contests with opposing counsel. Maybe they would even worry about properly training new lawyers so they could become efficient and competent more quickly. I can dream, can’t I?

You can call me crazy. I know the likelihood that law firms will buck their DNA and try any of these or other ideas for changing the way they do business will be met with screaming resistance (see Schopenhauer stage #2). All I can say is what John Wooden says: Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

The debate over work-life balance in law is a lot like getting started with an alternative legal career search: Once you start questioning the status quo, you can see all kinds of possibilities.

So to all of you Gen Y women lawyers out there job hunting and worrying about working yourselves to death: More power to you. I hope you help the profession change for the better. I think you just might.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who completely lost her patience with law firms when she got criticized for being too creative. She coaches attorneys to help them find work that empowers them, not drains them. You can get a discounted sample coaching session to see if coaching works for you—email jalvey@jenniferalvey.com to schedule yours today.

If your career boat is sinking you, fix it!

We all have our reasons for waiting. Most of the time, they’re crap. Especially the ones you are most indignant and defensive about: But I have a mortgage and a family to support! I have a trial in 2 months! I can barely get out of bed!

I’m not dismissing these. Yes, they are difficult circumstances. They feel awful, oppressive, and horribly scary to confront. But I have faced some version of them all. Facing them often sucked. I won’t say it was pleasant, but I got through it and am now thriving. There is life, a great life, on the other side.

These circumstances are only as insurmountable as you think they are. When you say they’re impossible to overcome and slink away in defeat before firing the first shot, you give those obstacles power over you. And your situation won’t get much better if you use bad circumstances as reasons not to take some steps, however small they may seem, toward your dream life and work.

Here’s the secret: Your life gets better because you acted, even when you were miserable and unsure. Especially when you are miserable and unsure, acting has enormous power. It tells the Universe you are on the move, and enlists its aid.

Waiting for your life to calm down before you take steps to improve it is like the captain of a foundering ship waiting for the storm to pass before fixing that pesky gaping hole in the hull. True, repairs in rough seas won’t be as perfect as if they were done in drydock, but guess what? At least those repairs can get you to drydock.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who’s been at sea a few times. She coaches foundering attorneys on how to fix their career boats so they can head to peaceful waters. She offers discounted sample coaching sessions for those in need of a career path repair; schedule yours today by emailing Jennifer at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com.

Usually “you can do so much with a law degree” is uttered by well-meaning family, friends or non-lawyer colleagues. And I agree with the sentiment, up to a point.

The alternative legal career path may be a little rocky, but oh what a view!

Yes, you can take your law degree into many interesting, rewarding, even lucrative careers. I’ve done it twice. But the alternative to a legal career is the road less traveled. The signposts are sometimes faint or indecipherable. The most popular maps are often inaccurate or take you to places you don’t really want to go. It helps a lot to have a tour guide. In other words, it’s easy to get stuck and founder if you’re not alert.

That’s why those who hate law stay in it—not because they don’t have transferable skills or other talents they could use elsewhere, but because the trip out can be daunting. They stay stuck because they are scared.

The point where I wholeheartedly disagree with the whole notion of “you can do so much with a law degree” is when it’s used as insurance, of sorts, to persuade people on the fence about law school that they should go. Parents and other champions of safe-sounding careers often pull the timeworn phrase out when they sense wavering. As in, hey, if it doesn’t work out, if you decide that being bored out of your mind for 75+ hours a week while working for dysfunctional, toxic jerks isn’t your thing, you can just do something else. Snap your fingers and poof!

Right, because it’s really easy to take $200,000+ worth of debt plus regular living expenses and switch to a new, quite possibly lower-paying career. It absolutely can be done, but it’s not for the faint of heart.

Finding an alternative to a legal career when you’ve got a bright, shiny JD takes a fair amount of soul-searching and innovative thinking. These are not things that law exactly encourages. (Nor does corporate America, for that matter.) Employers look for the roundest peg they can find for their round-hole jobs. They’re not after square pegs, even if the square peg is a diamond waiting to be shaped and polished.

So it’s up to you to decide that you are the one in charge of your career, rather than the capricious job market, and that you won’t passively wait for the alternative legal job fairy to come wallop you on the head with her wand. You have to throw Cinderella thinking out the window, and figure out how to look like the round peg of gold with your JD.

Deciding to actually steer your career ship is a wonderful, heady thing to do, but I know from all the sample career coaching sessions that I do, it’s a very hard mental step for many attorneys. And I talk to the ones who are the most miserable in law and most motivated to get out. If you’re not miserable, the inertia can be staggering.

I started thinking about this because of the NY Times’ article on law schools and how they deceive prospective students about their future job prospects, or rather lack of them. This problem isn’t new, but it’s now reaching the second- and even first-tier law school grads, so it’s finally getting some attention from the bastions of the status quo.

I was one of those who fell for the “you can do so much with a law degree” line, and that was 20 years ago. Yet not much has changed since then. I talk to recent law grads and they say the same thing—they and so many of their friends went to law school without a clear idea of what they wanted out of it. They didn’t have any burning desire to practice law, but they also didn’t have any real idea of what they did want. They figured they could get some kind of decent job with a law degree in hand. Now, they’re finding out that those jobs are the ones they could have gotten without a JD.

If you’ve already gotten your JD and want out, you can do it. Keep reading this blog for tips on how. Network. Get in touch with what you’re really, truly longing to do. Call me or another career coach and get going, already. Make your plan. Follow your path.

If you’re a 1L or 2L, you can quit school. Really. You don’t have to finish what you started when it’s become clear that starting was the big mistake. It’s senseless to compound one mistake with yet another. It’s a damned sight easier to pay back $60,000 or $100,000 than $250,000. So many of the jobs you could switch to with a JD in hand, you could probably do right now. You’ve got the proven analytic skills, you’ve got the work ethic and determination. You’re smart. You do not need your job passport stamped with a JD to show this, I swear to you. You can get a job as a paralegal while you think things over. Or apply for a job as a legal journalist, if you’re of a writing bent. Or . . . you fill in the blank, with your interests and talents.

If you’re reading this and you’re considering law school, do yourself the biggest favor of your life: Make sure. Make sure you’ve got the right personality to succeed in law with relative ease. Make sure you understand what the work is going to be like once school is over and real life as a lawyer starts (most people don’t know, and law school WILL NOT teach you. Promise.) Make sure the schools you are considering are telling you the truth about where their grads are working long-term.

Ask the hard questions now, before you take on a crippling amount of debt in an uncertain, volatile economy. Don’t engage in the magical thinking that yeah, all this bad stuff can happen, but not to me. Sure, you may be special. But BigLaw and other firms are awash with associates and partners who were special, too. Now they don’t feel special, but instead miserable and would quit tomorrow if they didn’t have enormous debt. Check out the comments on any Above the Law and WSJ Law Blog career stories if you don’t believe me.

I know, prospective law students, I might sound like I’m discouraging you from following your dreams. As a life and career coach, I absolutely believe that people should follow their dreams, but let’s be clear about what those dreams are, and are not.

The dreams to follow are ones that light you up with their possibilities. That make you want to get up in the morning. You can’t stop thinking about how cool it would be if you could do X. The dreams to chase are those that give your life meaning, not just creature comforts. Even if they’re really nice creature comforts like vacations abroad, expensive homes and luxury cars.

The dreams to not follow? The ones that are fueled chiefly by the prospect of earning a lot of cash. If you’re getting excited mostly because the paycheck is large and the work seems not awful—be ruthlessly honest about this, I beg you—keep on searching for the dream that fires your imagination and your soul. Cash is nice, but I have never seen a person who is truly satisfied and happy in their life simply because they have money in the bank. I’m not saying that wealthy people are by definition unhappy. The happy ones have meaning in their life first, not big bank accounts in their life first and then meaning.

You, whether you’re already a lawyer, thinking about it, or on the road to law—you can do so many things. Choose the thing that makes you radiant.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who loves helping people who are lost in law to find their way out. She offers discounted, no-strings sample sessions so you can see if coaching is something that will help you find your path. Email Jennifer at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com to schedule your session today.

Res ipsa loquitur, folks.

Joy isn’t the only emotion that is contagious. Researchers say that enthusiasm, sadness, fear and anger are, too. Indeed, most emotions are catching–and negative emotions may be easier to catch than positive ones.

There’s even research that says “feelings circulate in patterns analogous to what’s seen from epidemiological models of disease.”

We’ve all experienced this. Remember studying for the bar or even law school finals? You’d be fine with the amount of work you had been putting in, until you ran into THAT person. You know, the one who was always panicked, anxious and sure he was going to fail no matter how well the practice exams were going, and then suddenly–you were too.

I’ll bet you have a few Emotional Typhoid Marys in your life. Most of us do. Emotional Typhoid Marys spread gloom, doubt and uncertainty about your ability to find work that you love. If you express optimism about finding a new career, the ETM tells you 5 dog-eat-dog stories in under 5 minutes, and drains your hope and conviction. Your momentum vanishes. You spend hours, days, maybe weeks getting over their infection.

Emotional Typhoid Marys frequently huddle together in law firms, since misery likes company. And there, they spread their disease of pessimism, anger and gloom.  That’s one reason some lawyers find it so hard to break free of their misery-inducing jobs—they’re being constantly re-infected by the despair and hopelessness that Emotional Typhoid Marys spread in their wake.

So the obvious solution is to find some Susie Sunshines to hang with, and catch their joy.

Lawyers tend to be highly suspicious of Susie Sunshines, because they’re convinced that Susie Sunshines simply ignore unpleasant aspects of reality. Then, when something bad does happen to a Susie Sunshine, they say “Aha! See, I was right.” (It’s that evidence-gathering thing we do to support the conclusions we already reached without facts.)

Very often, though, Susie Sunshines see that things can be tough, but are just as convinced that things will eventually get better. They also think that Emotional Typhoid Marys look for problems and troubles, and thus draw those things to themselves. Susie Sunshines instinctively get that the pessimism and gloom of ETMs is catching.

As non-linear as it sounds, joy helps you find that wonderful new alternative legal career you’ve been looking for. It helps you find a better job in the legal world, too, if that’s what you’re after. Think about it—assuming credentials are roughly (very roughly) equal, who would you want to hire: the anxious, fearful person who makes you feel they will suck the life out of you, or the confident, happy one who makes you think they will make your life easier at work? Exactly. So, it’s time to go catch yourself some joy.

Here are some ideas for getting started:

• Take a drumming class, or find a drumming circle or concert. The pulsating rhythm can really pull something good from the depths of your soul. No need to know how to read music. If you can sing or clap Row Your Boat, you’ve got enough rhythm to drum.
• Walk a labyrinth. It’s an amazing, often transformational experience. You can find labyrinths in all kinds of places—cathedrals, gardens, farms, hospitals, and historic monuments. Sometimes private individuals make them and open them to the public periodically. Here’s a link to the Labyrinth Locator to help you find one near you—or you could make your own, with a sheet and some tape or paint and some Googling.
• Take up knitting or crocheting. (Yes, even men do this.) In addition to the soothing, hypnotic effect of wrapping string around sticks, there’s the intense satisfaction of making something your veryownself. Plus, many yarn shops offer stitch-and-bitch sessions, where you simply bring your project and sit around with others working on their projects. Help and fun conversation at the same time.
• Go horseback riding. Horses may be large and strong, but they are also extremely patient and generous. There’s magic in connecting with a creature like that. Plus you get out in the fresh (well, frigid for many of us right now) air, and closer to nature’s rhythms. Take a bag of baby carrots with you, and you’ll be all set. And here’s a good place online for some horse gear if you want to make this a regular thing.
• Go dancing. Right after singing, dancing is the thing that humans have done for thousands of years to express their joy. There’s contra dancing, club dancing, ballroom dancing, swing dancing, Latin dancing, and many without a formal name. Pick one. Let your fears and inhibitions go, and catch the joy there.

And if none of these ideas appeal to you? Or if you try some and still aren’t feeling the joy? Drop me a line and let’s talk. I’ll coach you to find your joy.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who eats far too many Dove Promises dark chocolates. But they do help her coach attorneys to find joy in their work and lives. If you need some help finding that joy, drop Jennifer a line at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com. Or ask about a discounted sample coaching session.

Art may not have made it into Origin of the Species, but that doesn’t mean it’s not crucial to our survival. Photo courtesy Stockvault.net.

This essay was delivered as part of a lecture to the parents of incoming students at the Boston Conservatory on September 1, 2004, by Dr. Karl Paulnack, director of the Music Division.

As you read it, think of all those reasons you tell yourself you don’t have time or talent to be creative, or to follow your passions rather than your oughts or your guilts. See if those beliefs shift a little by the end.

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One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “you’re /wasting/ your SAT scores!” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

One of the first cultures to articulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose, and fortunate to have musician colleagues in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist. Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the Nazi camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—even from the concentration camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”

In September of 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. On the morning of September 12, 2001 I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, on the very evening of September 11th, was singing. People sang. People sang around firehouses, people sang “We Shall Overcome”. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

Very few of you have ever been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but with few exceptions there is some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings—people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks. Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in a small midwestern town a few years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70′s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute cords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?”

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. The concert in the nursing home was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

“If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”

******

So what do you feel like doing now with your life? Drop me a line if you’re ready to change and need some help.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who coaches attorneys on connecting with their creativity to make a life and career filled with meaning. She offers discounted sample coaching sessions–schedule yours today by emailing her at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com.

A new year, and the lure of a new, better legal job!

I applaud the urge to find a new job if your current one is making you unhappy. Unhappiness, discontent, misery—they can all be excellent motivators for change.

But. (Aw, come on. You knew there was a ‘but’ coming.) If you don’t pay attention, your resolution to find a new job may backfire on you. Either it’s like all the other New Year’s Resolutions—most of that resolve for superficial change disappears by Valentine’s Day. Or you get so fixated on the goal of Find New Job that any job starts looking better than your current situation. You know, the career version of how people all get prettier at closing time.

I haven’t done formal New Year’s Resolutions in probably a decade. Instead, I tend to focus on one or two key aspects of my life that need some work. Stuff like:

• Addressing my fears head-on, rather than organizing my life to avoid being scared,
• Practicing a more positive outlook on life’s valleys,
• Engaging in active meditations, like walking while visioning and singing,
• Changing my default to motion rather than stewing when problems arise, or
• Improving my strengths, rather than fixing my weaknesses.

That’s a hodge-podge collection from several years, but you get the idea.

I doubt any of this list sounds sexy or exciting enough for the average person in America, but you, dear readers, are particularly smart and perceptive people. I’ll even bet a few of my ideas have some appeal for you.

I’ll bet you can come up with your own focus or two for the coming year that will address the root causes of your work unhappiness. Maybe you can figure out your true joys in life. Or what you’re not going to tolerate any longer because it takes away too much of your integrity. Or maybe you can commit to a weekly date with yourself to explore things you’re curious about or that add joy to your life.

None of these ideas are nice, concrete goals that play well with to-do lists. And that’s exactly the point. Items checked off a to-do list rarely impart lasting life or career satisfaction.

It’s OK to make finding a new job your New Year’s Resolution, but as you work on that resolution, focus on what’s important for you and the things that you value about yourself and others. Kindness, nurturing creativity, sanity and lack of dysfunction, work that has a purpose that resonates with you—those types of values. Then work on bringing those things into your life, unconnected to your job. You’ll be amazed at the positive things you can draw to yourself as a result. Even a truly wonderful new job.

Peace and joy to you as this new year begins. Whether you make a New Year’s Resolution or not.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who coaches attorneys on finding new jobs that make them excited to show up at work. She even offers discounted sample coaching sessions so you can try on coaching before committing. Contact her at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com to schedule your free session.

And if you’re in a law job that makes you miserable? Yeah, not such an awesome time of year.

Singing your sorrows away.

So here’s a trick to lift your spirits: sing. Out loud. Really. As in, go caroling, go to a Christmas service, or serenade your family/ friends/pets.

Singing is powerful magic. Just ask the slaves in the South, who created glorious gospel music, full of joy and hope, in the midst of grinding misery and oppression.

You would think that I would remember this, since I sing every week in a choir. But I forget. And this past Monday, I was dragging a doom cloud around, a sunflower wilting from lack of light during the dark of the solstice time.

Fortunately, we had our final rehearsal, with instruments, for Christmas Eve service. And after 2 hours solid of singing, my funk had departed. It’s hard to focus on your own gloom and doom when you’re concentrating on notes, entrances, rhythym and what other people are singing and playing.

That’s really the key about singing—it gets you out of your head and somewhere else. It’s an active meditation, and it’s worked for humanity for thousands of years. Whether or not you have an iota of musical talent, pouring yourself into music puts you in a different dimension. It’s a restorative place to visit for 20 minutes, and does an amazing job of putting the kibosh on a snarly mood.

The kind of music you sing really doesn’t matter. If you’re into Christmas, you can choose anything from tacky to sacred and still get your Christmas music fix. If Christmas music brings you down, pick something else. Blues, rock, country, folk, Celtic—it doesn’t matter what the music is, it just matters that you like it and that you sing.

Put your heart into it. I like singing in groups, but if that freaks you out, sing solo. Sing in your car if you’re worried that the shower isn’t private enough. Concentrate only on the music (and the traffic, if you’re driving!).

If you know that seeing certain relatives or friends triggers a black mood, plan some singing time. If you’re in for a several-day visit, plan a little session every day. If it’s a few-hour visit, then sing as soon as possible after you see the offending party. Sing to banish their darkness so it doesn’t infect you.

Being purposeful in bringing good things into your life will help you weather the holidays, and your imperfect work life, too.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who coaches attorney on finding joy in life and work. If you’re ready to explore some lasting changes, Jennifer offers free sample sessions of coaching. Contact her at jalvey AT jenniferalvey.com to set yours up.

And in the highly unlikely event (snort) that the poll doesn’t work properly, please feel free to vote in the comments section.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who coaches attorneys on how to put fun back in their lives. You can try coaching for free (a sample, that is) by contacting her at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com.

What big cities can't offer--stinkin' cute Main St. with free parking.

The corollary to “make it there”-think is that you can’t leave, or you’re giving up everything that makes life fun and civilized in the 2.75 hours you might have weekly to enjoy your big city life.

I get it. I grew up in a town of 27,000 in the armpit of Eastern Kentucky. I wanted the hell away from the small minds and small opportunities and rednecks. I wanted it all—culture, sophisticated thinking, better shopping. Excitement! People who thought being smart was a good thing!

Then I spent 15 years in Washington. (yes, I hear all the sniffs of superiority from the New Yorkers, Chicagoans, Angelenos, etc.) living that big city life. And I found out what living with gridlock, expensive real estate, and among a lot of Type Assholes is really like. It grinds you down.

When you start looking at alternative legal careers and are determined to stay in the big city, life can look tough. Many of the jobs you’d really love and thrive in don’t pay like law—and champagne tastes can be very hard to give up. (It’s worth it—but that’s another post.) But if you switch locales, you might not have to start drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, unless you just like it. I hear there are people who do.

So I’ve developed a little list of what makes living in smaller cities kind of awesome. Just to help you get over yourself a bit.

Parking is cheap or free. In my little town, a suburb of Nashville, there are (get this) two 4-story parking garages that are FREE, even during the festivals when we’re swamped with tourists. Can you believe the city leaders forego this easy source of revenue? And that they haven’t turned the garages over to private industry to make money off the tourists? There aren’t even parking meters, just pesky 4-hour limits that one enforcement officer polices with an electric mini-car. What is wrong with these people? They do resident-friendly things, for crying out loud.

The percentage of people who drive like Type Asshole maniacs is much, much lower in smaller cities. I’m still working on getting rid of my DC-perfected triple over-the-shoulder check when merging or changing lanes; now I only check twice. Almost never does anyone fly out of nowhere at 85 mph, passing on the right side. In fact, drivers often move to the next lane to let in merging traffic. And at 4-way stops in my town, drivers often wave you on, when they were there first. This was highly disconcerting when I first moved here, let me tell you. But I somehow have adjusted.

You run into people you know in stores and around town, frequently. Seriously, I’m pretty sure I live in Mayberry. I know what time the priest at my church takes his dog on their daily walk through downtown. I see friends’ cars driving down Main St. and have chats with them while they’re at a stoplight and I’m on the sidewalk. I have not had to give up famous people sightings, either—I’ve seen Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman at my local Starbucks, and my friends have run into Ben Folds there as well. What is different is that everyone is very blasé about it, and gives them their space. Though usually a few teenagers ask for pictures, which the stars graciously oblige them with.

What people call gridlock in smaller cities is hilarious. They get upset that it takes them 20 minutes to get 7 miles on the interstate during rush hour. I remember many times in downtown DC it would take me 20 minutes to get 5 blocks. And rush hour? Lasts just a bit over an hour, rather than say 4 hours.

People have the time and inclination to be nice to perfect strangers. Now, this may be a Nashville thing, since we consistently get ranked as a very friendly place. All I know is that living and running errands among people who generally put a priority on being nice and considerate is a much better way to live, for my money. The cashiers laugh and joke with you, and not because they’re forced to by corporate policy. There’s so much less friction when you’re not constantly having to fight your way through aisles or into parking spaces. Um, what, you think I’m a little obsessed about parking and driving issues?

There’s space to breathe! You can get a 2,500 sq. ft. house with a yard in a nice neighborhood for under $350,000. I can send my kid outside when he’s driving me nuts and the only things I worry about are whether he turns on the hose or tramples the lettuce patch. And the aisles in the stores are actually wide enough for two shopping carts to maneuver simultaneously. It rocks.

There is intelligent life out here. Sure, there’s a lot of Red State-ness, but if you look just a little, you’ll find a fun intelligentsia in every city. I’ve had Harley riders compliment my Abbie Hoffman bumper sticker that says “You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.” There are nonconformists and free thinkers everywhere, not just the big cities.

So, what’s holding you back from thinking outside the city? I’d be curious to know.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who coaches attorneys on making big, meaningful changes in their lives. She offers free sample sessions so you can see if coaching is for you. Contact her at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com to schedule your session.

Are you are lilly planted among cacti? Uproot yourself! Photo courtesy Stockvault.net and Heather Kitchin.

But here’s the biggest tip of all: Your Myers-Briggs type is not your destiny. It’s a tool that helps you find career happiness, whether that is in the legal profession or in an alternative career to law.

In other words, just because you fall into one of the 6 personality types that predominate in law—ISTJ, ESTJ, INTJ, ENTP, INTP or ENTJ—doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider leaving law. You may fit in, but maybe you would be far happier away from the dysfunction of the law firm environment.

And just because you’re not one of those 6 types, doesn’t mean you must leave law to find career happiness. Maybe there is something compelling (in a positive, rather than fearful way) about law that trumps the negatives for you.

Deal with Who You Actually Are

What you do need to do is pay attention to what your type preferences are telling you. Most of the time, your MBTI type reveals what you’ve been ignoring, denying, or hoping would just go away if you worked harder at being what you’re actually not. Stop fighting your hard-wiring. Find work that plays to your strengths, not your weaknesses.

The MBTI can help you get out of reductionist lawyer-think and see that humans are varied and diverse, and that we all have special personality quirks that are, in fact, quite valuable and actually useful. Even if your innate preferences aren’t valued in a law environment, they are valuable. That’s a revelation to a lot of lawyers.

There is no one set of job skills or personality type that is superior. There are, though, places where some personality types are going to thrive, and others where that same type will whither and die. Law is filled with people who didn’t or couldn’t see that they were beautiful lilies sending themselves off to be planted with the cacti.

There are lots of reasons why we do this to ourselves. Partly, it’s that many lawyers choose law at a young age, without knowing much about themselves, let alone what the realities of lawyering are. And, when you’re young, you often think you’re invincible, and that the harsh realities people try to warn you about simply won’t happen—after all, you’re really smart and determined, and you’ll figure it out.

Or, your lack of self-knowledge led you to rely on others, like parents, teachers and friends, to tell you what to do. Time for that to stop, isn’t it?

Youthful idiocy is why it took 2 Myers-Briggs assessments before I started paying attention to it. By the time I’d practiced law for 5 or 6 years, I had had enough real-life experience in unsuitable environments to listen to what the MBTI was saying. By then, I was convinced that I had little skill or talent to offer anyone at any price. I was really beaten down.

The MBTI helped me see positive value in what I had been told repeatedly were negatives. To most lawyers, my way of doing things was just wrong, bad, and needed to be corrected.

Just how much I had internalized the constant criticism came home to me when I was talking to a sales rep at a career consulting firm, and I told him one of my problems was that I got bored easily. I thought this was a major flaw in my work ethic, to be honest. Never mind the sheer amount of work it took to get through college with A’s, and a top 10 law school with good enough credentials to then clerk for a federal judge—I obviously didn’t have a decent work ethic if I didn’t like doing the same stuff for 10 hours, day in and day out.

Here’s what I’ll never forget: The sales rep said to me, “You aren’t bored, you just need more challenges.” It was a huge lightbulb moment for me. And it also is very true of Perceiving part of my MBTI type, which loathes (and I mean seriously, allergically hates) repeatedly following the same routines. (Perceiving types adore variety and change. So if you’re a P and trying to work in a BigLaw factory, it probably isn’t going to work very well for you.)

The Importance of the Middle Traits

When you’re looking to your MBTI type to help you sort out where to focus your career energies, pay the most attention to the middle two pairs, S/N and T/F. Those are the function pairs: ST, SF, NT and NF. Those pairs are the most closely correlated with job satisfaction.

In other words, the function pairs are where you are the least malleable and able to bend your personality to fit in. Function pairs often represent some core values for you, and violating those core values daily is exhausting and dispiriting. Do it long enough, and you are asking depression to come visit with an engraved invitation.

For example, imagine you’re an NF, a function pair that strongly prefers to approach life and work in a warm and enthusiastic manner, and likes to focus on ideas and possibilities, particularly possibilities for people. Now, how satisfied would you be if you were working in an environment that had a high concentration of NTs, a function pair that really likes work requiring an impersonal and analytical approach to ideas, information and people? Hello, oil and water? Add to that the insane demands and stresses of the current workplace, and it’s like the spark that sets up complete flame-out.

Maybe that’s where you are now. The good news is, you don’t have to hope, like the lilly does, that someone will come along, uproot you from the desert and plant you in the right place. You are the one who wields the shovel.

So how do you figure out where to transplant yourself?

1. Listen. Listen to yourself and your honest likes and dislikes. Quit discounting them just because others around you do. You matter, and what you prefer in this world matters.
2. Look for jobs that value your innate preferences, rather than violating them constantly.
3. Stop doing your job search the way most people do, by totting up your skills and looking for job descriptions that match them. The only thing that method will produce is more of the same work life. Isn’t that what you’re trying to escape?
4. Look for what excites you. Even in a great job, there’s a certain amount of drudgery and ick. Having enthusiasm for your work overall will carry you through those tough spots more easily and gracefully. As opposed to now, when the tough spots feel like every single day and threaten to drown your spirit oh, say, hourly.
5. Pay attention to what MBTI types concentrate in which  jobs and industries. Move toward the ones that have a fair number of your type. Being surrounded by people who share similar approaches and values is a big part of what makes a work environment feel supportive.

All these suggestions are simple in theory, but the execution is where things get hairy. If you need help with maintaining focus while you are executing your brilliantly simply plan for a happy lawyer life—well, I know this career and life coach who used to be a lawyer . . .

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who played against her type for a decade or so, before she discovered that working with her strengths required a lot less therapy. She helps attorneys maintain their focus while executing their brilliant new career plans. Contact Jennifer at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com for a discounted sample coaching session to get you going on your path.

That’s because T/F is one of the function pairs (the other is the Sensing/Intuitive pair). The function pairs are where you are likely the least malleable and least able to bend your personality to fit in—in other words, it’s where you’re the most hard-wired.

The average day for a Feeling type in a typical law job.

What does that mean for unhappy lawyers? In a nutshell, you need to figure out it you’re like the archetypal lawyer when it comes to the Thinking/ Feeling divide. And if you’re on the Feeling side, you have some pondering to do.

When it comes to lawyers, Thinking types dominate. Indeed, Dr. Larry Richard in his ABA Journal article says that 78% of lawyers show a Thinker preference. Thinking types strongly prefer making decisions in a “detached, objective, logical manner.” Which of course makes perfect sense—those are some of the hallmarks of lawyering, right?

One thing I found particularly interesting about Richard’s research is how women lawyers tested. Turns out that women lawyers often do think more like men, at least when it comes to the Thinking/Feeling preference scale. In the general population, 60% of men fall on the T side, while only 35% of women do. (So yes, there’s a whopping tablespoon of truth in the whole Mars v. Venus thing.) In lawyers, Richard found that 66% of women lawyers are Ts, and 81% of male lawyers are.

The essence of Thinking types, according to Personality Pathways, is their focus on “being dispassionate, able to make decisions at arms-length from whatever emotional turmoil may surround a situation.” Yep, sounds like the lawyer ideal to me. An important attribute of Thinkers is that they don’t take conflict personally, and in fact, as Richard points out, they can really look forward to a good argument.

Feeling types? Not so much. For starters, most are about “validating and valuing others, encouraging, coaching, educating and motivating. . . . [P]rotecting, helping, and caretaking” rank highly in their world. Also, being authentic and open to emotions and inner sensations are pretty high on a Feeling type’s list of what’s important in life.

So Feeling types do not like conflict (to put it mildly), take it personally, and value harmony highly. They are the “can’t we all just get along” gurus of the world.

Knowing whether you’re a Feeler or a Thinker is important to assessing whether to stay in law. As Richard notes, “[t]he constant adversarial mentality wears on a feeler, while for a thinker it can represent one of the most stimulating parts of law practice.”

One interesting trend that both Richard and law schools are starting to notice is that higher numbers of Feeling types have been entering law recently. It could be that with increasing numbers of women in the profession, the Feeling attribute is also increasing (remember about 65% of women in the general population are Feelers).

Or, it could be that Millenials are driving the trend. As Richard theorizes, maybe “more Feelers enter law because of the possibility of realizing some of their ideals. (Feelers are more likely to seek a job that is idealistic.)” The data about why we’re seeing more Feelers in law isn’t clear yet, Richard says.

What does this mean for Feeling types already in law who are trying to find a happy career? Should you try to find a niche in law? Well, it depends. (Yes, the quintessential lawyer answer. Sorry!)

My own take—which I should point out is not exactly what the average Myers-Briggs expert would say—is that the never-ending friction that Feeling types experience in nearly any type of law environment will drive them at the very least a little batshit crazy most days. Being surrounded by Ts who approach life and decisions in a fundamentally different way than Feeling types do is a recipe for constant miscommunication and conflict. That drives just about anyone nuts.

If you’re just barely over the line into the F preference scale and you otherwise like law, you could make a go of it and come out fairly satisfied with your work life. But you’re going to have to do some serious looking to find the right environment for you to utilize your Feeler qualities regularly. If you don’t do that, you will remain frustrated and unhappy in law.

No matter where you are on the Feeling type scale, locking yourself into a career where that preference is devalued, even mocked—as it is in most law firms and quite a few other legal environments—is a roadmap into depression and/or constant self-doubt. Is that really what you want out of  life?

Being a strong F and trying to work in a very Thinker-heavy environment is like trying to wear a size 7 shoe when really, you are a size 9. You will never, ever be comfortable (let alone functional) until you find the right shoe size and start wearing it all the time. If your workplace insists that you must wear that size 7, well, you have a choice, don’t you?

For those who have been following along this latest Lawyer Personality jag, you’ll be relieved to know there’s only one more to go—the one where I muse a little on what it all means for your job search, whether that be an alternative to law or a better place for you in law.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who is pretty sure it was the “N”, not the “F” part of her personality type that got her through law school and 8 years of law practice. She coaches attorneys on how to find work that matches all the parts of their unique and wonderful personalities. Contact Jennifer at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com for a discounted sample coaching session to explore your perfect work fit.